EXPLORING AUTHENTICITY: INTRODUCTORY LABORATORIES TO EXPLORE STUDENT USE OF MODEL-BASED REASONING TO JUSTIFY SOLUTIONS TO SOCIETAL CHALLENGES

In an effort to design a learning environment that allows us to broadly investigate questions concerning how students utilize conceptual models and argumentation to justify solutions to societal issues, we created a series of laboratory exercises for an introductory physical geology course at Texas A&M University. Our design engages students in authentic scientific practices and model construction of earth systems and guides them to use those models and explanations as the basis for problem solving concerning specific case studies in coastal geology, earthquake hazards, watershed management, and climate change. Engaging in authentic practices builds cognitive reasoning skills that students will need regardless of major.

The laboratory exercises involve different subjects and case studies, but have similarities in that all of the exercises have embedded problems or scenarios that requires students to represent or evaluate scientific data, make claims about the data trends, and use those claims to build models. To address the representation of data, students must discern the data that is suitable for the scenario or problem and make claims that are supported by evidence. Additionally, students must provide detailed written descriptions of the claim and conceptual model through the use of argumentation. This sequence of activities scaffolds the students so that they can use their models to address societal challenges arising from environment degradation and natural hazards. Our design and practice of these instructional activities is drawn from our understanding of situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeship.

The activities allow us to evaluate student conceptual understanding and learning through the collection of several types of student artifacts including representation of earth systems, representation of scientific data, verbal and written explanations of models and scientific arguments, and written solutions to specific societal issues or environmental problems surrounding earth systems. Evaluations of student representations and their written description of the representation will allow us to examine student's ability of link evidence and prior scientific knowledge to their claims and policy decisions through argumentation.